Hong Kong government to adopt city’s own ChatGPT-style tool after OpenAI further blocks access
- Innovation and technology chief Sun Dong says AI application developed for government use, but will gradually be opened to all residents
Hong Kong government departments will use a locally developed ChatGPT-style tool, the innovation chief has said, days after OpenAI further blocked access to its model for the city and mainland China.
Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong said on Saturday the artificial intelligence (AI) programme was mainly developed for official clerical use, but authorities would eventually make it available to the public.
Sun said the programme was the “Hong Kong version of ChatGPT”, a powerful generative AI model that can understand sophisticated prompts and generate humanlike responses.
The city’s new tool, named the “document editing co-pilot application for civil servants”, was developed by the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre (HKGAI) under the government’s InnoHK innovation programme.
The centre was established in October last year by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in collaboration with four other tertiary educational institutions to carry out research and development on generative AI technology.
“We will eventually open the use of the system to the whole society of Hong Kong,” Sun told a radio programme.
